Half the Sky Review

World Issues
January 3rd, 2013
Half The Sky: A Book ReviewHalf The Sky, a novel written by Pulitzer Prize winning couple Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, has been soaring of the bookshelves as of late. The book was published by the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group on June 1st, 2010 and holds 320 pages of inspiring stories of extraordinary women. It is classified as a nonfiction, gender studies novel that brings the tyranny against women to light. The main reasoning for this novel is to spread the word against cruelty on young women and girls in third world countries. While many people around the world are joining in the movement, I will go into detail on both the positive and negative aspects of this book. Then you, the reader, will decide whether to read or not read the novel, but for those who do, I hope you become a part of the movement, Half The Sky.

In the novel, readers are faced with many issues that are running rapid worldwide. The book and film take readers to unusual countries, where the distress of women is becoming unbearable. Some of those countries include Cambodia, Kenya, India, Sierra Leone, Somaliland, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Liberia, and even the United States. By broadcasting the bravery of women and girls, who rise above their circumstances, shows that there is a light at the end of this tunnel of suppression. Talking about the nations individually in a negative way, may leave you with a bad taste in your mouth about these countries. This review is not to judge any of these countries and their shortcomings. It is to bring specific issues to the surface that are being handled improperly. Forced Prostitution, Maternal Mortality and the lack of a good Education, are the three main issues that need to be reversed in order for the healing process to begin.

Forced prostitution is an issue that no country can escape. It can happen anywhere and at anytime. There are many reasons why these young women and girls are forced into...

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...Our Government
In the book Half the Sky by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn there were many arguments about the UNFPA which was created in 1969, giving the award of Population Award gold medal to Qian Xinzhong, who was forcing abortions in China and was the head of the family planning program. This set up a controversial issue with the United States government because it couldn't do anything to hurt China so it got rid of the funding for UNFPA. The United States government wanted to bring up the issue of family planning especially with birth control use, abstinence-only programs and the control of abortions in Africa. There are many people who have HIV and AIDS that could be prevented if those programs were effective. The author tries to make a point that on both sides of this issue need to be more flexible and and try to make things work for the health of the women and men, with this issue. The argument in the book is facing against the Republicans and Democrats and how us Americans need to play a role in family planning and birth control uses.
The author makes many arguments regarding the steps to help women and men. One argument the author reminds us about is “For every 150 unsafe abortions in sub-Saharan Africa, a woman dies, in the United States, the risk is less than 1 in 100,000.” In saying that, liberal and conservatives should want to prevent unwanted pregnancies and reduce abortions. The author is making a statement of...

...1) How would you convey the message of the book “Half the Sky” to family, friends, and colleagues?
This book is a crucial dose of reality for those of us that are spoiled by the comforts we have grown used too. Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn explain in the book “Half the Sky” why empowering women in the developing world is ethically right and extremely vital.It is a gripping story of how customs and culture have historically oppressed women. The strength of the human rights movement and of actual change across all cultures is going to be asteadfast task of courageous women who give themselves permission to say no to so many years of unthinkable tyrannical cultural customs and fight for a new way of life. Many of us close our eyes to what is going on in other countries and assume there is nothing we can do to change things. But as Edmund Burke said, “All that is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing.”
2) What was the most valuable thing you learned from reading the book?
There are some many stories in this book of women being abused and belittled, which would have made me give up reading it if it had not also had some of the most inspiring stories. Many of these women never gave up. They could easily have let death take them or succumb to the lives they were forced into but they didn’t. We have all heard stories about sex trafficking and how women are treated in these countries but...

...Half the Sky is a movie that discusses the oppression of women around the world. It brings to light the issues that, even in today's society, are still occurring. Women, young adults, and children everywhere in the world are becoming victims to abuse, rape, and being deprived of getting an education. This film documents Nikolas Kristof going around the world with the help of well known people in America to show some of the issues and some organizations that are working to change the way society views women and children. Early in the documentary a shocking statistic was given. It stated that around 60 million to 100 million females are currently missing out of the population. Where are all of these women going, and how are we letting this happen in today's societies? Females all around the world are becoming victims of genital mutilation, sex trafficking, rape, and abuse. Half the Sky is shedding light into some of the cultures around the world where this is a norm, and is trying to promote awareness. It discusses the reasons why these events are still taking place in current cultures, and what we can do about it to change the way people respond to these events.
Some of the issues addressed in the movie Half the Sky are talking about women being oppressed in current societies. Women are constantly being put through human trafficking, violence, are being undereducated, and catching a ton...

...Help: Organizations from Half the Sky
Today, we often are bombarded with upsetting stories of violence and politics happening throughout the world on the internet, our daily televised news stations, the radio, and in newspapers and articles that we read. In the book Half the Sky, written by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, true stories regarding the horrific reality young girls and women are faced with in underprivileged countries across the world are brought to its reader’s attention. Although these stories are not the easiest to read, emotionally, what is inspiring is the work of organizations dedicated to helping these young girls and women. The book includes a number of organizations focused in aiding females in these parts of the world. There were two specific organizations that stood out to me while reading Half the Sky, as their mission has been successful in providing medical care to girls and women who have endured suffering related to sexual violence and inadequate maternal care. The Edna Adan Maternity Hospital and HEAL Africa charitable organizations have taken great strides in providing the necessary services to help girls and women recover; ultimately saving their life. (Please note: According to Half the Sky, it is the Edna Adan Maternity Hospital, however, according the organizations website, (www.ednahospital.org), the name is Edna...

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Half the Sky Reaction Paper
Genna Fugate
Saint Francis College
Half the Sky Reaction Paper
A lot of people don’t know about the trial and tribulations that women go through in other parts of the world. I also had no idea just how much women suffer in other countries until I read Half the Sky by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDonn.
This book is truly heartbreaking and will definitely leave an impact on you. While reading this book I was so disgusted by the way men treated women in foreign countries like Cambodia, India, Africa and etc. I feel like it is a shame that these issues like rape and trafficking were not made a big deal. How could men treat women so cruelly when women hold up half the sky? To me, that statement “women hold up half the sky” means that women make the world go round. Women are the ones who have to go through child birth, the ones who clean and cook, and last but not least, they are the ones who can make a house a HOME. Women play such an important role all around the world. Without a woman there would be no man.
The first heartbreaking story that I read was about a young girl name Srey Rath. “Rath’s saga offers a glimpse of brutality inflicted routinely on women and girls in much of the world” (p. xiii). Rath is a confident Cambodian teenager. When...

...﻿May 4, 2010
Anita Rookard
“Half the Sky”
With Pulitzer Prize winners Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn are great authors who give us true stories of girls and woman from Africa and Asia and their extraordinary struggles. We view the Cambodian teenager sold into sex slavery and an Ethiopian woman who suffered devastating injuries in childbirth. Drawing on the breadth of their combined reporting experience, Kristof and WuDunn view our world with anger, sadness, clarity, and, ultimately, hope. Through these stories, Kristof and WuDunn help us see that the key to economic progress lies in unleashing women’s potential. They make clear how so many people have helped to do just that, and how we can each do our part. In much of the world, the greatest unemployed economic resource is the female half of the population. Countries such as China have prospered precisely because they emancipated women and brought them into the formal economy.
Realistic, and inspirational, this book is essential reading for everyone. They tell of an attempt to help a woman dying in childbirth in an African hospital, and the institutional, social, and financial problems that block efforts. They discuss how their support for legalization of prostitution was undercut by the more sordid reality they discovered behind the apparent success of just such a legal zone in India (in Kolkata), and examine how legalization of prostitution in the Netherlands compares...

...travels and experiences with the issue at hand. Kristof has been inside many brothels and has even purchased girls to try to save them from the harsh truth that is prostitution. The reader wants to listen to what these people have to say because we know that what they are saying is factual and important to the change that we hope to see in the prostitution of girls. The authors want to teach their audience about what is happening in these countries. Kristof and WuDunn hope to influence the reader to take actions similar to their own. In the intro they say, “We hope to recruit you to join an incipient movement to emancipate women and fight global poverty by unlocking women’s power as economic catalysts” (xxii).
In the second chapter of Half the Sky, the authors’ main points are about diminishing prostitution, saving girls forced into sex slavery, and informing people about the severity of trafficking. Kristoff has many life experiences visiting the brothels in India, China, and other parts of Asia. This chapter mainly focuses on one of his trips to
Beauchamp 5
buy girls from the brothels they are forced to live in and take them out of that situation. He touches the reader’s emotions because he gives us an inside look at things that most people don’t get to see. It gives the reader a new perspective about the situation at hand.
A large portion of the chapter is also dedicated to telling us about how there are organizations doing...

...11-22-10
Global Literature Quiz
As we read “Half the Sky” we were able to get a taste of how difficult the lives were for the women that were a part of these terrible doings to women. Coming from a family in which the majority is women, I cannot bare to see any women put in the situations that these women were put in; the daunting thing about the whole situation is that these heinous acts still exist today.
As for the question, why is the desperate state of women in impoverished cultures also a great opportunity for them? This question is a very odd question because in the end there really is no good outcome to any of this. Too many women in these impoverished cultures they barely had enough money to put slippers on their feet. The brothels were many women were abducted and forced to do work by labor or sex is also a place where some of these women actually volunteered to work at. “Despite the knowing the knowledge of what actually occurs to women in these brothels, some women were so desperate for money that they voluntarily went in the brothel’s to work”. The fact is, is that these women’s backs were against the walls financially, mentally, and physically, some felt the only way out was to work and make money. Even though they knew what happens in these brothels.
The fact that these types of things still exists baffles me every day. To actually think that in this day and age people still do things like this. One day hopefully...